Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

noCAMPING AND WOODCRAFTout of doors. It is one of the blessings of wildernesslife that it shows us how few things we need inorder to be perfectly happy.Let me not be misunderstood as counseling anybodyto *'rough " it by sleeping on the bare groundand eating nothing but hardtack and bacon. Onlya tenderfoot will parade a scorn of comfort and ataste for useless hardships. As " Nessmuk " says:" We do not go to the woods to rough it ; we go tosmooth it — we get it rough enough in town. Butlet us live the simple, natural life in the woods, andleave all frills behind."An old campaigner is known by the simplicity andfitness of his equipment. He carries few " fixings,"but every article has been well tested and it is thebest that his purse can afford. He has learned byhard experience how steep are the mountain trailsand how tangled the undergrowth and downwoodin the primitive forest. He has learned, too, how tofashion on the spot many substitutes for " boughten "things that we consider necessary at home.The art of going " light but right " is hard tolearn. I never knew a camper who did not burdenhimself, at first, with a lot of kickshaws that he didnot need in the woods; nor one who, if he learnedanything, did not soon begin to weed them out ; noreven a veteran who ever quite attained his own idealof lightness and serviceability. Probably " Nessmuk" came as near to it as any one, after he gotthat famous ten-pound canoe. He said that hisload, including canoe, knapsack, blanket-bag, extraclothing, hatchet, rod, and two days' rations," never exceeded twenty-six pounds ; and I wentprepared to camp out any and every night." This,of course, was in summer.In the days when game was plentiful and therewere no closed seasons our frontiersmen thoughtnothing of making long expeditions into the unknownwilderness with no equipment but what they carriedon thetir own persons, to wit: a blanket, rifles ammu-